Dr. Seuss on your Kindle?

Dr. Seuss’s birthday was this weekend, and I’d decided to celebrate it by downloading some of his books onto my Kindle. Unfortunately, most of Seuss’s classic books aren’t available in Amazon’s Kindle store. But I still found some fun ways to remember the life and work of Dr. Seuss using my Kindle.

The Early Works of Dr. Seuss – Volume 1

There is one Seuss ebook you can download to your Kindle — a collection of his first work as a satirist and commercial artist. Dr. Seuss — who’s real name was Theodore Geisel — was born on March 2nd in 1904, and by the 1920s he’d already begun publishing his own funny cartoons and illustrated stories. There’s some political cartoons in this collection, and he even wrote and illustrated an informational pamphlet for soldiers in World War II. It seems like a good way to appreciate the rest of his career, and get a glimpse at the artist before he created The Cat in the Hat. Some Amazon reviewers complained that the text is small and hard to read on some Kindle screens, and reviewers at Publisher’s Weekly warned that it’s not a the collection of sweet children’s stories that you might be expecting. But they acknowledge that this 172-page ebook “occassionally reveals images reminiscent of Geisel’s famous characters: Yertle-ish turtles standing atop each other’s backs and Horton-like elephants….”

Green Eggs and Ham and Other Servings of Dr. Seuss
An audiobook read by Jason Alexander, David Hyde Pierce, and Michael McKean

Dr. Seuss’s rhyming stories should make great audiobooks — and his publisher’s lined up some fantastic celebrities to read them! For $11.95 you can load this collection of 9 complete Dr. Seuss stories onto any audio-enabled Kindle — with some very funny readings by Seinfeld‘s Jason Alexander, Frasier‘s David Hyde Pierce, and comic actor Michael McKean (who you may remember from This is Spinal Tap or Laverne and Shirley). There’s even some whimsical music in the background of these stories — you can hear a five-minute sample if you point your web browser to Amazon’s web page for the audiobook. Here’s a complete list of the 9 stories available in this collection!

     Green Eggs and Ham read by Jason Alexander
     One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish read by David Hyde Pierce
     Oh the Thinks You Can Think! read by Michael McKean
     I’m Not Going to Get Up Today read by Jason Alexander
     Oh Say Can You Say? read by Michael McKean
     Fox in Socks read by David Hyde Pierce
     I Can Read With My Eyes Shut read by Michael McKean
     Hop on Pop read by David Hyde Pierce
     Dr. Seuss’s ABC read by Jason Alexander

The Cat in the Hat and Other Dr. Seuss Favorites
An audiobook read by John Cleese, Kelsey Grammer, Billy Crystal, John Lithgow, Walter Matthau, and more

Another audiobook of Dr. Seuss stories features an even more impressive cast of readers. Imagination Studios lined up 11 different celebrities, and then had each one of them read a different (complete) Dr. Seuss story. This longer collection offers more than two hours of Dr. Seuss — you can hear an eight-minute sample at Amazon’s web site where Kelsey Grammer reads The Cat in the Hat. But I’m more intrigued by the other readers, which include John Cleese, Dustin Hoffman, and Walter Matthau (reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Here’s a complete list of the 11 stories available in this audiobook, along with the celebrity who reads it!

     The Cat in the Hat read by Kelsey Grammer
     Horton Hears a Who read by Dustin Hoffman
     How the Grinch Stole Christmas read by Walter Matthau
     Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? read by John Cleese
     The Lorax read by Ted Danson
     Thidwick, the Big-Hearted Moose read by Mercedes McCambridge
     Horton Hatches the Egg read by Billy Crystal
     The Cat in the Hat Comes Back read by Kelsey Grammer
     Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories, Gertrude Mc Fuzz, and The Big Brag
     read by John Lithgow

The Day I Met Dr. Seuss by Anne Emerick

Amazon’s Kindle Store rescued another work of fiction about Dr. Seuss which otherwise might never have been published. Author Anne Emerick admits that she never actually met Dr. Seuss — though she’d tried to arrange an interview with him back in 1989 (when Seuss was still alive). But she transforms her curiosity about the author into a charming rhyming story of her own — which, unfortunately, was rejected by every publisher she showed it to. Some literary agents praised her “great creativity”, though, and 23 years later, “I came to the realization that many people enjoyed the story,” the author announced in a press release, “and so why not share it with other Dr. Seuss fans.”

“This story is dedicated to Theodor Seuss Geisel,” she writes in the book’s introduction, calling him “a literary legend whose work continues to brighten our days while helping children learn to read.”